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#speciation
bonefall · 1 year
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if humanity was wiped out and clan cats were the first species to begin to evolve to take their place, what part of their bodies would be the first to change? what would be the last?
Hmm... Well, I think when discussing evolution, it's good to keep in mind that it is not a process that has a "goal." Humans are an incredibly unique species; there may not ever be anything quite like us ever again.
There are ecological niches; and convergent evolution happens so often because there is an optimal shape to accomplish that task. A social pursuit predator develops long muzzles, and long legs, so hyenas and dogs look similar even though they're barely related at all.
And Clan cats are clearly some kind of subspecies of cat that's finding value in social learning and tool use. If humans were no longer a threat or consideration, and this subspecies kept selecting for traits that value social ability and tool use;
Non-physical changes
Their brains would change. I'm not going to say their skull would get larger though; that's a correlation with species intelligence, but I wouldn't rule out some other change. Feel the back of your skull; that is actually a broken monkey gene at work. OUR brains got larger, but evolution is random change. It's just as likely their brains just get wrinklier, or some protein mutates and makes their synapses fire faster. But the brain would change somehow. Which leads to,
Their diet would change. Brainpower is INTENSE. They would need a lot of food and a more varied diet. for my Clan Culture series I actually gave them a gene that turns their taste for sweetness back on, like lactose tolerance in humans. They may need to eat more fish, or start eating ONLY cooked food to help absorb more nutrients.
Longer lives, longer childhoods, less babies Big brains are INTENSE. We are a cocial species-- that means we have to LEARN as we grow. We are not like precocial, like baby kittens, who are born knowing how to crawl and hiss. This brain takes massive parental investment, both in the womb and after we're born. Even as adults, we're constantly learning, improving our skills, teaching what we know to others. It's not good if your master craftsman dies early or you have generation turnover in less than 5 years. And what good is being a social species if there's no society to support these long, informative childhoods? If you'd waste all that energy pushing out 5 kittens a year only for half of them to die and "waste" so much investment? Smaller litters, longer childhoods.
Physical Changes
Tool Tooth Evolution works with what the organism has. Caledonian crows haven't evolved thumbs just because they use tools; they use their beak and their feet. Clan cats have two paws and a mouth; Hands and a pair of portable scissors. A top-and-bottom pair of teeth might become adapted to be stronger so they stop breaking their teeth while toolmaking.
More dexterous paws Specifically, the pad would be LOWER on the paw, leaving a "dip" between the beans and pad. It would be like that dip in your palm; that is an adaptation for tool use. You don't see that beautiful square-shape in chimpanzees or our relatives. I'd reckon an animal using its hands as toolmakers would develop a shape very similar RIGHT there.
Wrist mobility Turn your palm towards the ceiling right now. That movement is called supination. Now flip your hand and aim it towards the ground. That's pronation. Cats currently can't move their wrists like that. They would be able to, if the species started adapting towards tool use. (Don't do this if it would hurt your wrist of course!! You get the idea.)
Dewclaw would beef up And I say this because every time I see a cat actually needing to manipulate something, the dewclaw is actively used. I think it's likely that it would slide back down the paw over many generations and become a two-knuckle thumb, but with the claw being permanently extended. Speaking of claws,
Index claw would become long and straighter. And it would stick upright like a velociraptor, so that it doesn't dull over time. A very long index claw would be helpful for fine manipulation. Claws evolved for catching prey but becoming useful for tool use instead is called exaptation, when a structure that evolved for one purpose becomes useful for another.
Tails would become even more expressive. Cats do communicate with sound as well; but they say a LOT more with their tails. I think it would actually follow that they would naturally speak a sort of tail-sign, if they were evolving into an extremely social species, especially since they are hunters (and not apex predators at that) and silence is a virtue. To accommodate the complexity of language, that thing would be like a bendy straw.
Tails would have a light tip. Because it makes it easier to see. A cat with out a tip is harder to understand when they're tail-speaking, let ALONE in dark conditions. If it's not white, any lighter color would start being selected for.
And that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I'd considered this heavily before but, there you have it.
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a-dinosaur-a-day · 9 months
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Years ago I talked to a science coat clad museum person who was going to a palentological talk in isle of wight.
I hadn't talked to someone who listened that closely and excitedly for years. Its a treasured memory. They even invited me to the talk, unfortunately I was going home next day as was only on holiday.
I was talking about how speciation is difficult to classify now, so I can only imagine dinosaurs.
I talked about gull and duck ring species and freaks of nature, hybridisation.
I knew for years of the nanotyrannus being juvenile trex thing.
I now know of the stygimoloc/dracorex being juvenile pachycephalosaur thing and the torosaur/triceratops debate.
I wondered if some dinosaurs that were found once could of been some of this (like beckalspinax, although they may actually be altispinax). But I understand majority is just due to rarity of fossilisation.
What do you think of all that? I'm not a paleontologist or a biologist (both have been a passion though).
There are probably a lot of species that are just ontogenetic stages of one another. But there are probably a lot that are legitimate! Luckily ontogeny we can determine with histological studies, if we're able to do them. And stuff like sexual dimorphism we can find by looking at populations and seeing there are two distinct peaks or morphs of differentiation. Since there are ways to determine of things are different sexes of the same species, or different growth stages, a lot of other variation is probably at least somewhat reflective of actual species and diversity. But, when it comes to fragmentary fossils, it gets a bit murkier.
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flirts-with-dragons · 11 months
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Me normally:
Me after hungrily consuming more knowledge of biological adaptations and the theory of evolution: GROWLING BARKING FOAMING AT THE MOUTH SCREAMING JUMPING UP AND DOWN
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There are recognized sub-species within other animals that sure seem a lot more similar to each other than some regional human populations do. Compare "Siberian and Sumatran tigers" to "Yamato Japanese people and Australian Aborigines". If space aliens landed on Earth and absorbed some of our biology textbooks, wouldn't they decide there are human sub-species too?
Yeahhhhh no we're not going to touch that racist speculation.
If aliens understood speciation in the same way we do, they would see that humans have absolutely no genetic isolation from one another and have absolutely no morphological, pre-copulatory, post-copulatory, or geographic isolation to indicate any sort of speciation.
Many, many people used to ascribe to the racist belief that different races are different species, but it's absolutely incorrect and extremely harmful, and genocides have been perpetuated because of this belief.
Humans may be phenotypically diverse, but genetically, we are incredibly similar.
Different domestic dog breeds may look very different, but they're not seperate species because they don't fit any criteria for speciation.
Stop applying racist pseudoscience to humans.
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bittling · 2 months
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Lamprey News!
Pretty cool new paper published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management: Lampreys in California (Lampetra spp. and Entosphenus spp.): Mitochondrial phylogenetic analysis reveals previously unrecognized lamprey diversity.
This was a study out of U.C. Davis, which wanted to measure the species diversity of local lamprey species in California by taking tissue samples (via fin clips), looking for a specific gene in their DNA through a really cool process called DNA barcoding, to see how closely related the different species of lamprey in California are to each other. Additionally, the measure of how closely related the species are (genetic distance) was then used to estimate where different species begin and end, and then compared to the existing species data from before the study.
The study found that within the two lamprey genera present in California (Lampetra and Entosphenus), Lampetra showed a higher level of genetic distance between species than Entosphenus, possibly meaning that Entosphenus diverged relatively recently compared to Lampetra. Also, analysis of the genetic distance within some species showed that some previously known species didn't actually have enough genetic difference from the others to qualify as species after all. However, the study contends that at least seven species in Lampetra are present in California, rather than the three prior known species, including two new species!
Check it out below if you want to read it yourself, or see the figures. The paper is open access so you should be able to read it without issue (I read it while taking the bus to work, lol)
https://afspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nafm.10959
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weirdeukarya · 1 year
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Hello friend I have a question about evolution. And what seperates things as species. Let's say there are two seperate species, divided by the fact they can't breed and have sterile offspring. Let's say both of these species can breed with another animal, but that animal will produce fertile offsprings from either of them?
wow! hello! i’ve never gotten an ask before. hmmm, honestly i can’t say i can confidently answer your question because this is only my fourth semester in college…. but i would like to say most likely that wouldn’t happen. now, the separation of species is kind of a difficult and controversial topic because with new technology and information it’s becoming harder and harder for us to make a clear line as to what defines something as a species. it’s possible that all of these animals are the same species and some sort of weird mutation limits the first two from being able to produce fertile offspring. but to be honest, in biology, the easiest and most logical answer is probably the correct one, and that leads me to say that this isn’t something that would happen. that’s the best answer i can up with for you and i hope that helped! and let me end this by saying that we often think of biology as a hard science, but it is not and things are always changing and often times you don’t get clear yes or no answers like you might want :) but if you would like to respond again i’m interested in knowing if you are referring to something irl or hypothetical?
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scienceswitch · 6 months
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A Crucial Bottleneck in Human Evolution
A new study published in Science provides fascinating insights into a pivotal period in human evolution when our species teetered on the brink of extinction. Researchers from China, Italy, and the U.S. utilized a novel genomic analysis technique called Fast Infinitesimal Time Coalescent Process (FitCoal) to examine this crucial population bottleneck. FitCoal calculates the likelihood of genetic…
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nowonlyghosts · 1 year
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Faceless Burial // Speciation
(2020)
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onlyhurtforaminute · 7 months
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FACELESS BURIAL-WORSHIP
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spinosauridae · 2 years
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I got put in a headspin over the term Species and Subspecies
Because of guess what human taxonomy! Because, the definition of a species makes me want to bash my brains out, because if there's enough exceptions to a rule it's no longer a rule. Yet, I can't seem to find terms that are clearer than "Genus, species, and subspecies" because apparently we don't get that grace i don't get that grace. What i get from google is "Nobody can agree on shit" or articles from fucking 2010 so
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er-cryptid · 2 years
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oakkayblog · 3 months
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Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to Survive
No. 5 Story of 2023: Peer-Reviewed Paper Finds “Neo-Darwinism Must Mutate to Survive”
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whats-in-a-sentence · 4 months
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Figure 11.23 shows the speciation diagram for H3PO4, a triprotic acid, which yields anions H2PO4-, HPO4²- and PO4³- on successive deprotonations.
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"Chemistry" 2e - Blackman, A., Bottle, S., Schmid, S., Mocerino, M., Wille, U.
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How many generations and mutations does it take for a species to be classified as a new species?
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tenth-sentence · 6 months
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I shall have to return to this subject in the chapter on Classification, but I may add that on this view of extremely few of the more ancient species having transmitted descendants, and on the view of all the descendants of the same species making a class, we can understand how it is that there exist but very few classes in each main division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" - Charles Darwin
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